Publishers and Agents Stake a Claim to Anthropic's Payouts — Authors Are Outraged

The payouts under the class-action lawsuit against Anthropic have turned into a fresh conflict. To recap, the company agreed to settle the copyright dispute for 1.5 billion dollars: the court found that training AI models on protected works falls under the doctrine of fair use, but that the pirated copying of those books itself does not. Final approval of the deal came in July, after which the accounting began.

Under the terms of the agreement, the authors of nearly 500,000 titles are to receive 3,000 dollars for each unlawfully copied work. If a book is still being published by a traditional publisher, the sum is split evenly between the author and the publisher. But if the edition was self-published, or the rights reverted to the author after the book went out of print, the entire payout goes to the author.

Claims on Other People's Money

This week many authors received unexpected letters: someone else had laid claim to their payouts. Writer April Henry recounted that HarperCollins is claiming her book, the rights to which reverted to her no less than 17 years ago — and that same day a credit-monitoring service informed her that the publisher had been added as her employer, which it had never been.

Victoria Strauss of the Writers Beware blog points to two typical cases: publishers demanding money for works whose rights were long ago returned to their authors, or claiming the full 100% where only half is due them. She is cautious in her assessment — “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by poor recordkeeping” — especially since some publishers have already called it a mistake and asked Anthropic to set everything right.

Authors Guild head Mary Rasenberger likewise sees no “grab” on the publishers' part, calling what is happening a predictable consequence of a convoluted procedure and sloppy bookkeeping. Strauss, however, stresses that an unusually large number of identical complaints over the course of a couple of days points not to routine glitches but to something more systemic.

And the Agents, Too

Separate bewilderment was caused by the literary agencies, which also demanded their share — even though agents are not rightsholders of the books they sell at all. Writer Courtney Milan (the pen name of former lawyer and law professor Heidi Bond) spoke without mincing words, calling such claims impermissible.

Milan and the Authors Guild explained how to contest the distribution of the payouts. One of the subtle points is the date the rights reverted: to claim the full 100%, the rights must have returned to the author before August 10, 2022 — that is, before the “download date” recorded in the agreement.

Source: TechCrunch